Crowds exit Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, photo: Shreyans Bhansali
The 25 hour train ride from Beijing to Xining (W. China) is a welcome reprieve from the hot, hustle and bustle of China’s capital city. It is not like the next leg of the train, the additional day-long ride to Lhasa with its shimmering trails of altitude sickness tracing the way to the bathrooms. Nor is it like the 70 hour bus route from Leh (the northernmost city in India) to Kathmandu (the capital of Nepal) where your tires freeze into the glacial ice and you spend hours breaking them out only to repeat the process a few hundred meters down the road.
So much of traveling is taken up by transportation. It is during these times that one sees the raw veins of nations: the flow of people and the flow of goods, the places that are connected and those that are notably left unconnected. The symbolism of this particular train, which connects Beijing to Lhasa, brings me to ponder the history of transportation and the potential of well-done development to replace transportation systems as a more benevolent tool for governments to meet their agendas.
Qinghai-Tibet Railway, photo: Reurinkjan.
Historically, transportation has enjoyed a powerful role as a tool either to unite populations or to divide and conquer them. Railways united continents but were also used to overthrow Native American nations in the United States. Roads and automobiles made transportation available to the masses, but have also been used to control the flow of goods and cash during regional conflicts like the Ghorka uprisings (1980’s, 2008) in India. Finally, the airplane has increased global awareness and cross-cultural friendships while also enabling large-scale bombings.
Perhaps the largest impact of increased transportation has been the migration of people to form ‘melting pots’ which governments often leverage to their own benefit. Putting one ethnic group in charge of a region where a different ethnic group comprises the majority ensures that these groups fight amongst each other rather than uniting against central powers.
Governments use these political and transportation-based tactics because they, along with the people they govern, want to build strong, healthy nations that can grow and thrive peacefully. Rebellions, however, arise when people feel that their basic living standards are not met by their governments, the very same feeling of neglect that has arisen from divide and conquer tactics. Building strong, healthy nations, thus, might be more efficiently accomplished by both governments and citizens turning their efforts towards sustainable development as a method of improving living standards.
In Beijing, we met with many people working towards improving the living standards of the Chinese people. Dr. Gwen Zahner, a professor of epidemiology at Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, is working relentlessly to increase rural access to books and health education. Dr. Yang Xudong at Tsinghua University has dedicated himself to improving rural energy and Brendan Acord at AES is working to expand China’s large-scale renewable energy capacity.
The journey from Beijing to Xining has given us time to reflect on these inspiring individuals and on the role of development in peace building. Now in the western Chinese province of Qinghai, the ‘we’ of former posts has expanded to the we that incorporates our local staff and the villagers with whom we work. Thus, we hope that, through our work to improve living standards, we can contribute to peace both between people and their governments and between people and the environment.
One Earth Designs (OED) was founded in 2007 by Catlin Powers and Scot Frank (OED website; OED facebook page; Twitter @OneEarthDesigns). Catlin will post on Mondays and Wednesdays. You can also find her on Twitter @catlinpowers.
